A woman who is part of a group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists scribbled with black marker on a French painting on loan from the main Louvre to one of the satellite museums. Fortunately the curators say the damage is very superficial and should be easily cleaned.

My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

A woman who is part of a group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists scribbled with black marker on a French painting on loan from the main Louvre to one of the satellite museums. Fortunately the curators say the damage is very superficial and should be easily cleaned.

This comment is probably not eHell approved, but I truthfully hope she is punished fairly severely for that! I don't understand why some people feel they have the "right" to destroy the creative work of other people.

A woman who is part of a group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists scribbled with black marker on a French painting on loan from the main Louvre to one of the satellite museums. Fortunately the curators say the damage is very superficial and should be easily cleaned.

This comment is probably not eHell approved, but I truthfully hope she is punished fairly severely for that! I don't understand why some people feel they have the "right" to destroy the creative work of other people.

Agreed. Hopefully, she'll at least be held liable for the cost of the repair. I have no idea how much that would cost, but I'd be willing to guess it's in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Heck, charge her tens of thousands even if it can be fixed with a quick application of a Magic Eraser.

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My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

That's just... wow. I really can't stand people who deface artwork, regardless the cause. A work is a person's heart and soul out for display, I understand that. To deface it because of a political motivation is not only an insult on the painting's intent, but to the person who painted it as well.

It is also quite frankly meaningless. Neither the painting nor the artist has anything to do with her cause. She's put her name out in the media as someone who is willing to deface property for attention - a common vandal.

I had more respect for the group who threw cream pies in the faces of politicians. At least they had a point to their actions (and it was not permanent!).

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You are only young once. After that you have to think up some other excuse.

Could be worse. There was an art student whose decided to do a project that involved going to a museum, standing in front of a well-known masterpiece, swallowing a pint of yellow paint and vomiting it over the painting. In court, he claimed that the painter of the defaced work would have certainly supported his freedom of artistic expression, if still alive.

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My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

My mother used to work in a small religious college. We were good friends with the librarian, and occasionally helped out in the library, especially at the end of summer when they were gearing up for the fall semester.

One summer, we noticed that we were putting away a lot of brand-new, newly-cataloged art books. Someone commented to the librarian that the art department must have gotten a new donor, to be able to afford so many large, beautiful, expensive books on art and art history. Oh no, she said, she had to budget for these books every two years, because she had to replace them so regularly.

It seems that some of the students were from a sub-group of this religion that taught them very firmly, from a very young age, that human bodies were bad and evil and lustful, and that nekkidness in all its forms was a sin. Imagine their shock when they got to college and discovered entire BOOKS with pictures of paintings and sculptures of people's bodies! Without even a fig leaf or a tactfully placed scarf, sometimes! They couldn't just put the books down- that would be encouraging other people to sin, too! So sometimes they would steal the entire book. Sometimes they would just rip out the pages that had the horrible photos. And sometime they would cut the horrible photos out of the pages, leaving the written text behind.

The favorite, however, was the person who carefully and painstakingly used wrapping paper to make paper-doll outfits, and clothed each and every one of the nudes.

1) When I first began the job at this library, we often had art shows of work done by local middle school kids. One little girl had done a pretty chalk and pen abstract in colors that were just lovely and went with my then decor. I was absolutely enchanted and finally got in touch with the teacher and asked if the child would sell me the painting. The little girl was so excited and was afraid that asking $20 was too much. I thought that was fine and agreed to pay...which I did.

One day as I passed by "my" soon to be painting, I noticed black marks all over it. Turned out one of the artist's friends was jealous that someone chose her painting and they defaced it hoping I would reneg on my purchase. I remained steadfast and to her credit, the artist tried to fix it. Just don't understand why other people feel they have to ruin everything for other people.

2) Not defacing, but theft. This relates to religion and art. We had half a dozen enormous and old art books on the artwork and crafts of a particular religious group. Four members of said group were in and asked to see the books, which are reference materials and absolutely did not circulate.

Well, said group left, with strangely suspicious squared shapes in their previously flat shirt fronts..I went to my then supervisor and told her what was happening and she just shook her head. "We'll get into more trouble for harassing them than we will for letting them steal the books."

These days I am one of the collection development and acquisitions librarians and because of that incident and dozens more like it, a lot of us are loathe to spend more than thirty dollars on books. (Of course, we are loathe to spend money on almost anything that is new, popular or Oprah Endorsed because it will disappear within six weeks. If I had a dime for every time we have purchased Greene's "The 48 Laws of Power" in groups of ten and twenty, I would be rich today.)

Edited to add a bonus story: This illustrates exactly why my library's collection gets decimated and our patrons get rowdier. Years back we had one particular book thief who finally got caught, not by us, but by the employees of Other Town Library. Other Town Library had thief arrested and forced into lots of community time. During that time a police investigation turned up hundreds of our books in Thief's apartment.

Did we follow Other Town's example? Of course not.

WE made Thief a member of the newly formed Friends of the Library Committee because THAT would give Thief perspective on stealing.

To this day, Thief sincerely believes that they should have a say in most library programming and decisions......

1) When I first began the job at this library, we often had art shows of work done by local middle school kids. One little girl had done a pretty chalk and pen abstract in colors that were just lovely and went with my then decor. I was absolutely enchanted and finally got in touch with the teacher and asked if the child would sell me the painting. The little girl was so excited and was afraid that asking $20 was too much. I thought that was fine and agreed to pay...which I did.

One day as I passed by "my" soon to be painting, I noticed black marks all over it. Turned out one of the artist's friends was jealous that someone chose her painting and they defaced it hoping I would reneg on my purchase. I remained steadfast and to her credit, the artist tried to fix it. Just don't understand why other people feel they have to ruin everything for other people.

This makes me incredibly sad. I hope she continued being creative and found better friends.

A woman who is part of a group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists scribbled with black marker on a French painting on loan from the main Louvre to one of the satellite museums. Fortunately the curators say the damage is very superficial and should be easily cleaned.

This comment is probably not eHell approved, but I truthfully hope she is punished fairly severely for that! I don't understand why some people feel they have the "right" to destroy the creative work of other people.

I'm confused - why attack this painting? does this group think the French were behind 9/11?

A woman who is part of a group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists scribbled with black marker on a French painting on loan from the main Louvre to one of the satellite museums. Fortunately the curators say the damage is very superficial and should be easily cleaned.

This comment is probably not eHell approved, but I truthfully hope she is punished fairly severely for that! I don't understand why some people feel they have the "right" to destroy the creative work of other people.

I'm confused - why attack this painting? does this group think the French were behind 9/11?

I think it was more along the lines of "attack this famous painting and get LOTS of publicity for *our cause*" - but it could also be that the idjit is just an idjit and picked it out because she was in front of it when she found the marker in her purse.....